God loves us NOT because we’re lovable, because He is love. Not because He needs to receive, because He delights to give.
I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself.
In such a fearful world, we need a fearless church.
You cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it.
Never, never pin your whole faith on any human being: not if he is the best and wisest in the whole world. There are lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on it.
Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.
You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society.
Consciousness is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.
I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death.
If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not.
If the Church is not Making Disciples, then all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible, are a waste of time.
When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.
Thirty was so strange for me. I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.
We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved; we are rebels who must lay down our arms.
Have fun, even if it’s not the same kind of fun everyone else is having.
True friends don’t spend time gazing into each other’s eyes. They may show great tenderness towards each other but they face in the same direction – toward common projects, goals – above all, towards a common Lord.
If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man’s outward actions – if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his ‘conversion’ was largely imaginary.
God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.
God gives His gifts where He finds the vessel empty enough to receive them.
I begin to suspect that the world is divided not only into the happy and the unhappy, but into those who like happiness and those who, odd as it seems, really don’t.